The Flowering Currants 



ready to receive the moment the flower opens, while 

 the anthers below are not quite so alert to discharge 

 their pollen. Hence, in any case, the first chance of 

 fertilisation will come from a slightly older flower. 



Obviously it is a flower designed to attract insect 

 life the honey, the brilliant colouring, the massing 

 together of individual flowers into clusters, their con- 

 spicuousness in early days before the foliage develops, 

 all make an irresistible bid for attention, and many 

 bees and moths visit it. A little coal-black bee the 

 size of a small humble-bee with a long proboscis and 

 shaggy hind legs that can carry off plenty of pollen, is 

 a very assiduous visitor on sunny April days, and can 

 often be watched in eager quest rummaging in the 

 more newly-opened flowers. This particular bee is of 

 the female sex and by name Anthophora pilipes. 

 Hive bees, particularly in cold weather, are more apt 

 to bore through the flower walls than to reach the 

 honey by legitimate means. 



Each flower cluster will hang gaily on the shrub for 

 four or five weeks, though each individual flower has 

 only a life of from five to ten days. A score of flowers 

 may be at their zenith together and competing for visitors, 

 but usually only some half a dozen are really functioning. 

 If no insects visit, then no fruit is formed. If, how- 

 ever, each flower is artificially fertilised by its own pollen 

 then, though fruit " sets," it rarely develops to maturity. 



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